Facial mimicry interference affects reaction time but not accuracy on an emotion recognition task in children, adolescents and adults

Adults display superior performance on tasks of facial expression recognition when compared to children and adolescents. Embodied simulation strategies contribute to emotion recognition performance in adults. To date however, the use of such strategies in children and adolescents has not been examined. The present study investigated the development of facial expression recognition from an embodied perspective in a sample of 43 children (Mean age = 8.02 years), 35 adolescents (Mean age = 12.69 years) and 39 adults (Mean age = 19.92 years). In a three-alternative forced-choice emotion recognition task, children and adolescents were less accurate at recognising faces displaying sadness than they were at recognising happiness. Adults were equally as accurate at identifying happiness and sadness. All groups were less accurate at recognising fear than recognising both happiness and sadness. In trials in which the emotions were accurately recognised, all age groups were significantly slower at recognising fear than happiness. A non-linear developmental trend was observed for trials involving sad faces suggesting the need to consider pubertal status in future studies of facial expression recognition. A facial mimicry interference condition significantly interfered with the speed, but not the accuracy, of recognition of all emotions in all three groups. These findings converge with findings in the literature on emotion recognition by replicating performance differences in facial expression recognition across age groups. They also provide the first evidence for the use of embodied simulation strategies in children and adolescents during emotion recognition tasks.